Mark 9:2 After
six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high
mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. 3 His clothes became dazzling white,
whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. 4 And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were
talking with Jesus. 5 Peter said
to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three
shelters--one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah." 6 (He did not know what to say, they
were so frightened.) 7 Then a
cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: "This is
my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" 8 Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone
with them except Jesus. 9 As
they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone
what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
This Sunday is "Transfiguration Sunday." It's a
"theme" day. It breaks the mood and breaks the narrative that we had
been studying. All at once we jump from Mark chapter 1 to Mark chapter 9. Not
that there isn't a good reason for this. We're on the verge of Lent. It would
be difficult to go from the 'mood/themes' of the Sundays after Epiphany to such
a sudden and drastic change as the 'mood/themes' of the Sundays of Lent. And so
it is very common to have what I call "bridge Sundays" on the
calendar--and this is one of those. On this bridge day we step away from where
we've been, without fully stepping in to where we're going--and all for the
sake of examining some independent themes.
This is one of those times when it's very difficult to find
much NEW to preach about. It's like Christmas or Easter. Once you've heard the
story of the transfiguration a couple of times, and heard a sermon or two on
the topic, it's pretty difficult to expect any vastly new insights. About the
best a preacher can do is to try to key in on the differences between
the accounts (and there are some), but even this isn't enough to break the
usual emphasis. And the usual emphasis goes something like this: Jesus, and
Peter, James and John had this shared, wonderful, mountaintop experience. It
was nice...but they couldn't stay there. They had to get back down off that
mountain and go back to where the work was waiting--in Jesus' case, the hard
work of pressing onward toward the cross. And so, that's how we too should view
our mountain top experiences. They're nice when they happen, but we can't stay
there. There's work to be done in the kingdom down off that mountain. And so we
must resist the urge of Peter to build "booths" that will enable us
to stay longer, and get back down there to work.
Well, what can I say? I'm in broad general agreement with
that line of thought. Mountain top experiences ARE NICE....but we're called to
do more, etc. etc.
There's another slightly different way to look at this,
though, and that's from the perspective of the 9 disciples who never got the
mountain top experience in the 1st place. Seems a bit unfair. But it also seems
a bit typical. It seems very much like where I live my life... very much
like where the average Christian lives his or her life. After all, when was the
last time you received a heavenly vision of the glorified Jesus? To me, the
question of faith isn't so much what to do with Mark's rendering of the
Transfiguration narrative, or what to do with the 'experience' that Jesus,
Peter, James and John received, but rather what to do with the lack of
experience of the other nine, because that's where I'm at.
All of which brings me to the various shades of 'Victorious
Life' theology that creep into mainstream Christianity. Original Victorious
Life theology owes its heritage to John Wesley's (the founder of Methodism)
idea of total sanctification. This was the idea that a person could become so
close to God that the struggle with sin was essentially in the past; one could
live a spiritually perfect life.
Wesley held this out as an attainable ideal
for all Christians. Without offering comment on Wesley's original idea, the
real downside is that this idea has morphed into the material world. Many
Christians live their lives in a bubble of make-believe that says, bad things won't or can't happen to me now
that I'm a believer. The ultimate perversion of this idea is the
'Prosperity Gospel,' which not only says bad things won't or can't happen to
you, but adds that God "wants you to be wealthy."
The point I'm trying to make here is that if Mark chapter 9
teaches us anything it's that not only was the mountain top experience not experienced by the majority of the
disciples, it also constituted a tiny blip on the radar even of Jesus himself.
It was not the defining facet of his life of faith.
If and when they happen, we can receive mountaintop
experiences as a wonderful gift from the gracious hand of God, but true meaning
in the life of faith has to be found down off the mountain, or we will never last
on the road of Discipleship.
Cheers,
TM
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